


still i will live here

by flavus



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: (it's not directly mentioned but it's there), Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Character Study, Dad Jokes, Domestic Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Friendship/Love, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Dubious Consent, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Roommates, Trans Kurapika
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 16:07:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29919408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flavus/pseuds/flavus
Summary: It's the little things that keep Kurapika anchored in his body when all he wants to do is leave it.
Relationships: Gon Freecs & Kurapika & Leorio Paladiknight & Killua Zoldyck, Hisoka/Illumi Zoldyck, Hisoka/Kurapika (Hunter X Hunter), Kurapika & Senritsu | Melody (Hunter X Hunter), Kurapika/Leorio Paladiknight
Comments: 1
Kudos: 19





	still i will live here

**Author's Note:**

> here have some self-indulgent modern college au leopika because i just. i've been going through it & i really needed to write this. something something manifesting something
> 
> content warning for dubious consent/regretted sex/body dysmorphia + dissociation
> 
> title from mitski's "i will"

Kurapika curled into the kitchen corner. It felt safer than anywhere else in the apartment. He couldn't place the feeling, just knew it as jelly underneath the skin that had grown, suddenly, too tight for him. He flexed his fingers, stared at them like they belonged to someone else. They were shaking. 

He didn't have a trigger for it, not really. 

Sometimes he just woke up and remembered his body had been used as a weapon and had been looked at like it was disposable. His dreams reminded him of the look in a former bed-partner's eyes, sizing him up and stripping him bare, whispering sweet nothings that were never meant. Another someone's brush of Kurapika's hair, the touch of hands sticking and making him want to shave for weeks on end. 

All of it making him feel used. A former friend kissing him with lips that reminded him of candy apples and autumn nights, the smell of kettle corn clinging faintly to bright red clothes. Kurapika stealing a T-shirt from his closet and sitting with Hisoka on his lap, the other man tracing kisses down Kurapika's neck. Kurapika had only agreed to sleep with Hisoka because they were both horny and he needed a release, he wanted to feel someone else's hands on his body and someone moaning his name, and he knew Hisoka had a reputation for making people go woozy with want. 

He would've never done it had he known Hisoka was still hung up on someone else. 

"I'm still processing my feelings for Illumi," Hisoka said, a throwaway line that snagged on Kurapika's thoughts and played on repeat while he was railed against the wall and kissed until his lips were sore. 

"That's okay," he said numbly. It was okay. It wasn't okay. He ended up being both a therapist and a rebound, opening his door at night to see HIsoka wrapped in Illumi's sweater, eyes red and teeth gritted and wanting to pin him against the nearest hard surface. Hisoka told him about Illumi, waxed poetic about silky black hair while running his hands through Kurapika's blonde locks. He told him no one understood him like Illumi, no one had the same comprehensive list of kinks. 

They went on walks where Hisoka told him Illumi was his closest friend. He pointed out benches where they had listened to music together. He said he was afraid of dying without any close friends and the Illumi-sized hole in his life came through in conversation even if Hisoka never explicitly said it. 

Kurapika sat there and listened. He listened to Hisoka moan the wrong name into his ears and he listened when Hisoka told him, "I think I'm still in love with him," the next morning. 

It struck Kurapika like a knife in the heart. 

He wouldn't let anyone near him. He wouldn't talk about it, just came back that morning with face drawn and white. Melody tried to place a calming hand on his back and Leorio looked at him with eyes that asked more questions than his mouth did and Kurapika crumbled, folded in onto himself in bed.

He didn't want Hisoka nor did he want a relationship. He had consented to everything.

But when he looked in the mirror, he saw a ghost. He could barely see his soul buried underneath his bones. 

When he closed his eyes, he saw himself being thrown around like a ragdoll. It made him sick. He forgot what the sun looked like for a week. 

Leorio and Melody left the triple they shared to Kurapika, spending nights at Gon and Killua's room so he could have the room to himself. They dropped off soup from the dining hall, covered in notes from the four of them. Melody made him a mixtape full of study music, Japanese jazz that superimposed enough cheer to get him through assignments that he stumbled through. She drew the Spotify code on a napkin with a smiley face and a "You won't check your phone, so here you go!"

Killua left him Chocorobos, though sometimes they were beheaded "by accident." They were the only breakfast he could stomach, for a little. 

Once, Leorio dropped off shampoo, a sticky note with "I know that you probably aren't showering, but if you decide to soon, use this! It smells good!" 

That got him into the shower, for once not quick and fast and scrubbing hard enough to bleed. He imagined what it would be like to have someone kind running their hands through his hair when he pulled the shampoo through the strands. 

Maybe you can be that person for yourself, Kurapika's conscience cut in, but he didn't know if he could do that. He had already been so unkind to his body, thrown it out for someone to touch like it was nothing. 

Leorio said that Kurapika could use any of his sweaters if he didn't want to do laundry, since the washing machines were on the first floor. 

Kurapika swaddled himself in them, let the sleeves flop over his arms, and lost himself in the fabric. The first time he dragged on a well-worn navy sweater, "Old Navy" emblazoned over it, he sobbed. 

Gon arranged tiny stone sculptures by Kurapika's door, an art exhibit with tiny labels. He wrote that they were a parade of the wildlife on his home island in New Zealand and scribbled on a posterboard a makeshift impression of a blue sky. 

Kurapika took in the figures and settled them on his desk, the space around them the cleanest part of the room. The posterboard went on his wall, cut up into pieces so it could fit. Holding the figures brought him back to earth, reminded him that he could touch things without them clawing him to shreds. 

Eventually the guilt overrode his avoidance; eventually images of Melody and Leorio sleeping on the floor of Gon and Killua's overrode images of Hisoka and touches that felt like scars. He asked them to come back and sitting cross-legged on the bed, still wearing Leorio's sweater, told them what happened. 

He thought they would look at him like someone ruined. He expected them to look right through him the same way he did himself. Instead, they just nodded and told him they wanted to support him however he needed. 

"Your feelings are valid," Leorio insisted, sitting on the bottom bunk across from him, punctuating the statement with a wagging finger that stayed, thankfully, away from brushing Kurapika's chest. "You consented, but you didn't know everything. You did what you could with the information you had."

"You're not a bad person, Kurapika," Melody said quietly from the top bunk. She moved to open the blinds and the sun came rushing in. Kurapika winced, until he saw that the leaves had gone. Seeing the trees bereft, just like him, made him feel less alone. 

That night, when he couldn't sleep for shaking, Leorio came and sat next to him, telling him dad jokes quietly, so as not to wake Melody. 

"What's the best body part in the alphabet? The I, of course!" 

"I hear something ringing in my body — oh, shoot, that's just my cells." 

"What did the reformed doctor-turned-Catholic priest diagnose someone with at confession? Medi-sin." 

"What's the healthier cousin of wheeze? Knees!" 

"Leorio. Some of these don't even make sense. I worry for your patients' health with how bad these jokes are," he murmured, but he fell asleep with laughter on his lips.

* * *

There were several nights like that, stretching over the next year. So many times he apologized to Leorio for keeping him up. So many times Leorio told him, even when his eyes were dark from lack of sleep, "We're friends, and friends don't need to apologize for asking for help from other friends." 

Still, he ended up doing laundry for Leorio, sometimes. If he pressed his face against Leorio's sweaters to remember the comfort they had given him when he was still recoiling from the world, the other man wouldn't know. If he stole one to hold when he woke up even after Leorio had talked to him until he fell into an uneasy sleep, that was his business.

In the months after, he was afraid to talk to Gon and Killua because he was embarrassed. He knew they looked at him like a role model and he felt so ashamed of how he had used his body. He felt like a hypocrite, having sat down with them once, Leorio by his side, both of them awkwardly trying to piece together a "birds-and-the-bees" conversation that ended with affirmation that sex should be liberatory & it wasn't something to be ashamed of.

But when Killua caught him recoiling from his reflection, the other boy had dragged him to coffee and talked at length about the latest video game Gon and him had played. 

There was an understanding that didn't take words, and Kurapika never forgot it. When he didn't need words, he called Killua, who answered. They learned each other's Starbucks orders like the back of their hands: Killua's extra dark, white and milk chocolate mocha frappuccino with chocolate whipped cream and chocolate chips, Kurapika's iced vanilla latte with three pumps of vanilla instead of four, a sprinkle of cinnamon on top.

Leorio scolded Killua when he learned the other's coffee order, saying that it would cause diabetes, to which Killua always replied, "That's why I like getting coffee with Kurapika and Gon instead of you." The argument became a staple in conversation and it never failed to make Kurapika laugh. 

Initially, Kurapika skittered away from gentle unintentional brushes; Melody's hair fluttering past him when she went to grab her clothes to change in the bathroom, Leorio's elbow bumping his arm as the gangly man rolled out of bed ten minutes late for class. He would mutter a hushed "sorry," to which either of them would shrug it off and remind him it was okay. 

Melody taught him to play piano, inviting him to come along with her to the studio when she rented out the room for practice, and when he was too anxious to sit side by-side with her, she perched on a seat at the other end of the room and coached him from there. He remembered that touches didn't have to be dangerous when she met him at the practice room with a tea and their fingers brushed or when she moved his fingers onto the right keys. 

He remembered that touches didn't have to be dangerous or caustic when Gon begged him to join a running club. He had never pegged himself for athletic running; he was more a fan of running away from his thoughts, but he found that the motion was meditative. And he wasn't bad at endurance running, as was Gon; he was stubborn and that kept him going even when his feet told him to stop and walk. 

Soon, he grew familiar with the paths around campus. Sometimes Gon kept pace with him, a courtesy given that Kurapika was far slower than the other teen, who had grown up running around Whale Island for fun, but it gave him a temporary challenge even if it made him wheeze. Other times, Kurapika would lose himself in the repetition of the motion and the way it blurred the scenery, dirt roads leading to grassy paths along a river that snaked up to the top of valleys. Leorio joined them on occasion, huffing and puffing to keep up with both of them but eventually finding a groove where he would speed ahead to match Gon's pace, then fall back to match Kurapika. They ran in silence — "Finally, we've found an activity that shuts you up," Kurapika had quipped once, to Leorio's dismay. 

He found that he didn't mind, not so much, when Leorio's elbow accidentally ran into his. 

The sorries, to Leorio, at least, came less frequently. 

And when he couldn't speak to anyone, Kurapika propelled his body forward until he couldn't anymore. It reminded him again and again that his body was not a weapon nor a toy; it was something that could carry him, it was a scaffolding that held him together. And he didn't need help carrying his belongings up to the apartment he and Leorio move into the following year. He didn't need to pause for breath more than a couple times, something he had never been able to do before, and he felt proud of his body. He felt his leg muscles rippling underneath his jeans and the strength almost made him sob right there in front of apartment 404. 

Though Melody had gotten a different place — a studio to herself so she could practice without interruption — she was still a part of their lives, like Gon and Killua, the three of them weaving in and out of apartment 404 like a storm that left laughter and fake-frustration in its wake. 

* * *

Kurapika found that living with just Leorio — not Melody — was a beast all on its own. 

Leorio put his feet up on the coffee table. 

"I don't want to taste sock with my coffee," he grumbled. 

"Then don't drink the coffee I make," Leorio sniped back. 

Kurapika shuffled into their room with bleary eyes at six a.m., books abandoned on the kitchen counter where he'd started studying standing up to keep himself awake. 

Leorio poked his head up from his pillow and groaned. 

"As a psychology major, shouldn't you be taking care of yourself?" 

"Okay, pre-med student who went to sleep two hours before me. You're not fooling anyone." 

A grunt, and Leorio was snoring again. Kurapika made sure to throw a pillow at him to disrupt the noise before he sunk into sleep. 

Both of them had no idea how to cook anything beyond ramen, pasta and eggs, so they spent weekdays convincing Zepile — Leorio's friend and dining hall worker — to sneak them into the hall since they no longer had a meal plan. Weekends, they attempted to cook, staring at Budget Bytes recipes until their eyes burned. 

"Did you preheat the oven?"

"I think so?"

"It's not on." 

"Uh. I guess I don't have the Force, then."

"Aren't pre-med students supposed to be smart?"

"Only sometimes, Pika. Anyway, I butterflied the chicken and seasoned it. Wanna try it?"

"I am not trying to get salmonella before my midterm, Leorio." 

"Just thought I'd ask." 

They were a good team, Kurapika found. And if they brushed elbows even more often in the kitchen, he wasn't complaining. Neither was Leorio, though. 

He and Leorio got closer, over pancakes for dinner after study sessions at the library that dragged until their eyebags became permanent features. 

Leorio told him, careful and measured and prefaced with a content warning, about the first time he had sex. He spoke between mouthfuls of pancakes slathered in syrup and confessed that the "No" had died on his lips because he wasn't ready, and he was ashamed, and his partner had been all over him and he loved him but he wasn't ready to go all the way. Kurapika reached a hand over the table, gingerly, and Leorio took it. Kurapika squeezed.

"Thank you for trusting me," he said. 

Leorio smiled, eyes suspiciously bright. "Thank you for letting me share." 

They swapped stories about other, less painful first times. The first time they rode a bike. 

"I can't believe we were both twelve, I thought I was the only one!" 

"Leorio, you realize there are seven billion people in the world."

Their first time swimming. 

"I jumped in because I wanted to prove a point to my childhood best friend, Pairo. And I thought I was going to drown, but some survival instinct kicked in and I just —" Kurapika made a paddling motion with his hands. "I pushed him in after, only because I knew he could do it. Even if he said he couldn't." 

Leorio laughed and Kurapika tucked the sound into his mind to preserve it forever. 

"I would've been the one getting dragged in," Leorio confessed. "I was a lot more scared as a child." 

"Are you still scared?" 

"Me? Every day, I'm terrified," he answered, face open and confiding. 

"Me too," Kurapika said, biting his lip. "The world is scary."

"That's what friends are for, so we can be scared together." 

* * *

One day, Kurapika looked at Leorio and things slotted into place, quietly and all at once. Leorio was putting around the kitchen, half-awake in navy blue pajama pants with reindeer on them and a gray T-shirt that was fraying at the hem. The space filled with the smell of coffee, the only sound beyond breathing and footsteps the gentle burble of the coffeepot. Leorio yawned and Kurapika heard him talking to himself about what he wanted to make for breakfast while rummaging through the cabinet. 

"Hey, Leorio," he said. His voice sounded too loud to him. Leorio was still lost in the cabinet, muttering something about not wanting to eat cornflakes again because they were stale and how he swore there had been pancake mix yesterday, if Killua and Gon finished it off the last time they came over, he was going to kill them—

"Leorio," Kurapika repeated. Startled, his roommate whipped his head around so fast that Kurapika wondered if Leorio's head would fall off. When it didn't roll onto the floor, Kurapika moved before he expected to and sidled up next to Leorio. He took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of cotton and coffee and warm Saturday mornings. 

"Can I put my head on your shoulder?" he whispered. 

Wordlessly, Leorio nodded. Kurapika registered that his roommate had stopped breathing when he lifted himself up on tiptoes to place his chin on Leorio's shoulder. 

"How is your morning going?" He couldn't stop the smile from spreading into his words. "Doing anything special?"

"Nothing," Leorio said. He snaked an arm around Kurapika's waist, tentatively. Kurapika leaned into the warmth. "Nothing at all."

Then he turned his head to meet Kurapika's eyes. 

"Pika. Are you on tiptoes?" 

Kurapika flushed. "So what if I am?" 

"I don't mind," Leorio said, and bent down to press his lips to Kurapika's. 

Nothing much changed. 

Leorio still told stupid dad jokes. Kurapika still struggled to forgive himself for making his body feel less like a home. They still called each other hypocrites over their horrible sleep habits. 

But sometimes Leorio ran his hands through Kurapika's hair when the other felt up to putting his head on Leorio's lap. Sometimes he pressed a kiss to Kurapika's forehead after a questioning look and a decisive nod. 

Last night, he pulled his arm around Kurapika when they were watching Chopped on the couch and adamantly declared that he could make a better dish out of marshmallows, asparagus, porkchops and apricots. 

"No, you can't," Kurapika said, and leaned over to give him a kiss on the cheek. 

That morning, Kurapika had woken up to a note in bed, Leorio having gone early to a shift at the clinic he had begun volunteering at. The ache in his stomach flared full-strength, the emptiness against him unfamiliar. But it hadn't been a horrible day, until it hit him — an itch that kept on growing. 

And now he was here, against the kitchen wall. Feeling again like his body was a wreck, something that he no longer wanted anyone to touch. 

The sun was no longer slanting its way across the kitchen tiles when he heard Leorio come home before he saw him; there was a jingle of keys, a quiet curse while Leorio struggled to figure out which key opens the door. It jolted Kurapika into his body briefly, a fond huff coming from his lips because honestly, they'd lived here for months now and Leorio didn't have that many keys on his keychain. Then he didn't have the strength to pretend that he was fine, just pushed himself into the wall like he would melt into it. It was enough. A memory that he had a form. 

"Pika, I'm home!" Leorio's voice bounced into Kurapika's ears, too sudden, and he winced. "Pika?"

It took less than a minute for Leorio to find Kurapika against the kitchen wall. He bent down and didn't come closer. 

"Hey," he said. "Tough day?" 

Words died in Kurapika's mouth. He nodded. 

"Do you want a different sweater?" 

Kurapika shook his head. He had slipped on the navy blue one he had found so much comfort in the year before, cradled his hands in the cuffs. They were shaking, still. Tears filled his eyes and the shame and anger he felt at himself threatened to overwhelm his senses. He pressed himself even further into the wall and made himself even smaller. Flashes of hands on his body, the wrong name in his ear, "I'm still in love with someone else." 

Leorio just sat there, crouching. "Sunshine. What can I do for you?" 

"Leorio," he said, muffled by the wall, so small he worried his boyfriend didn't hear him. "Can you run your hands through my hair?"

"Do you need me to hold you?"

"No," Kurapika said. "Just. Just run your hands through my hair, please." 

He choked on the last syllable and hated himself for it. But Leorio said nothing, just came to his side and slid his hand through Kurapika's hair, the gentle, barely-there-pressure in the brush of his fingertips just enough to make Kurapika unfurl the tiniest bit. 

"You're not ruined," Leorio murmured.

"I let him touch me," Kurapika hiccupped. "Here and here and here and here. And I said I was okay, but. But I felt so used." 

"I know," Leorio whispered. "I won't ever do that to you," and the fierceness in his eyes and voice broke something in Kurapika, who gave himself over to sobbing. 

"But you're not ruined," he repeated, again and again. Kurapika latched onto the voice more so than the words until his breathing evened and he could feel himself crashing back into his body. "You're not ruined."

"I'm not ruined," Kurapika whispered back. "I'm not." 

"You're not," Leorio echoed. "You're not ruined. You were Kurapika before this and you are Kurapika after this."

"Yeah." 

"Yeah." 

They stayed like that, Leorio running his hand through Kurapika's hair, for what felt like hours. Kurapika let the tears fall until there were none left, until all of them cleared out the thoughts that hurt him. Snot had dried on Kurapika's face and left it sticky. The crying left his mouth dry and his nose clogged.

"God, I'm a mess," Kurapika laughed. It came out shaky. 

"You're not a mess, you're Kurapika," Leorio corrected. 

He rolled his eyes and it ironed out whatever tremors were left in his body. 

"Feeling better?" The concern in Leorio's voice bowled him over. It almost brought tears to his eyes — God, he thought they were gone, but there they were again. He didn't deserve him. 

"I can hear you thinking, Pika." A bop on the nose, and Kurapika was sufficiently dragged out of his brain. "Are you feeling better?"

"A little."

"I knew my jokes would work one day." 

"Let's just say that your jokes are not the reason I fell for you," Kurapika sighed. "I'm glad you're not going to be a stand-up comedian. That being said, speaking of standing up—"

Leorio shifted and stretched, then made an exaggerated bow and extended his hand to Kurapika. "Sunshine."

Kurapika took it.

"Hey," he said. "Thank you."

"Hey," Leorio said back. He smiled at Kurapika and Kurapika felt seen, held. Body and soul. "I love you." 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so, so much for reading through this. any comments + kudos mean the world to me!! find me on twitter @janelle_cpp + tumblr @katipunan


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